Bahamas – Day 2. All guests are equal, but some guests are more equal than others.
We woke up this morning at 8:30, got dressed, and headed to breakfast at Commonwealth, the other restaurant at the Rosewood.
Breakfast was buffet: there were eggs, potatoes, fresh fruit, cheeses, pastries, cereals. Everything was good. Interestingly there was no lox, but there was smoked haddock, which Tzvi put on his bagel. They also didn’t have real syrup for the pancakes – they had like a fake sugar free Aunt Jemimah equivalent that wanst really on par with the rest of the breakfast in terms of quality, so that was kind of odd. One nice touch at breakfast was that they had an avocado toast bar – a woman was making it fresh and you could choose to add a poached egg, tomato and arugula. The coffee cups were also tiny. I don’t quite understand that.
it’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood…
After breakfast we went to pool and got seats. An attendant got us set up with chair covers, towels, sunscreen and a bucket of ice with water bottles in it. There are two pools at the Rosewood – the quiet pool, which is like three pools overflowing into each other, and the lagoon pool that snakes through the pool area with seating around it. It’s really beautiful and set up so it’s not too crowded. Also there’s really only at most two rows of seating (in some parts there was just one row), so you never feel like you’re being seated too far from the pool.
I should mention that the Grand Hyatt and the SLS each have two pools as well, but Baha Mar works on a sort of caste system. If you’re staying the Grand Hyatt, you get a little blue plastic wristband that you’re supposed to wear all the time, and you can only use the Grand Hyatt pools and facilities. If you’re staying at the SLS you get a slightly nicer black wristband (which I’ve heard they charge you $100 for if you lose it), and you can use the SLS and Grand Hyatt pools and facilities. If you’re staying at the Rosewood you don’t get a wristband (that’s right – the wristband is to show where you’re not staying, not where you are), and you can access anything at Baha Mar. At one point on the trip I was speaking to a man who I think is the manager of the pool attendants. The man asked me if I had read Animal Farm, and told me that Baha Mar is kind of like Animal Farm – everyone is equal, but some people are more equal than others. (Yes, even the staff at Baha Mar are highly more educated – this particular attendant had a degree in kinesiology from LIU in Brooklyn and had previously worked at the Atlantis in the Bahamas and Abu Dhabi).
So, dressed in our finest bathing suits and bearing the overwhelming stench of superiority we settled in poolside at the Rosewood pool. We really were surrounded by a bunch of rich people. The people sitting next to us had a bag from another Rosewood hotel and were talking about buying a house (“well he knows we’re more willing to spend than other people”), and a lot of the women had large, fake, expensive looking breasts. There are also a lot of pregnant people here. Because the Bahamas is the only Caribbean destination where they don’t have Zika, it’s pretty much the only place to go for a babymoon in the winter. I think half of all of the women here are pregnant. Rivals our neighborhood.
There’s not much to say about the day. We just sat at the pool the whole day, swam a little (the water isn’t heated but it was still nice), used the hot tub (which is also beautiful and set off in a separate little area with its own seating), drank rum cocktails, and read books and magazines. Around lunch time we went to see what other food options there were. Once you leave the Rosewood property it gets a lot more crowded. Right by the beach there are a few food trucks, but nothing for us to eat (all BBQ and Mexican food). We really didn’t find much else to eat, but we did see a bunch of flamingos and a small aviary where you could pay to feed birds (nice for kids), as well as the other hotel pools. The Grand Hyatt pool is nice and had some cool waterfalls and a place where you could swim next to a giant fish tank, but it was really crowded. Maybe the Rosewood turned us into snobs, but it was unappealingly crowded. Next we saw the SLS, which is known for being more of a south-beach style party hotel. The SLS has a pool called the Privilege Pool, which charges $150 minimum for the day (“but I think I can do it for you for $100” the attendant told us) that goes toward food and drink. There was also a live DJ blasting music so loudly we couldn’t actually hear each other talking. No thank you. The main SLS pool looked nice too, but again, super loud music and so unappealing.
We got back to our hotel as quick as we could and decided to just order from the poolside menu. Once again we ordered the local crushed avocado, I had a green salad with apples and pumpkin seeds and Tzvi had fish and chips. All good. After lunch Tzvi went to check to see if the package with the Epi Pen had arrived yet. It hadn’t, so he checked the tracking number, which is when he found out that the package wouldn’t be arriving until Monday by 6:00 PM. Yes, even though they told my mother it would be there overnight, it turns out FedEx doesn’t actually deliver to the Bahamas overnight. Awesome.
This was a nice touch - a portable charger that they let you use at the pool. If only it didn’t take a half hour for them to bring it to us once we asked for it.
Around 4:30 we went inside, video chatted Hallie and got ready for Shabbos. We lit our menorah on the balcony again, but it had gotten so windy that we couldn’t keep the candles lit. We relit them a couple of times but it just wasn’t working.
Around 5:15 we went down to the Library and ordered tea and scones. The scones came with clotted cream and were good, but a little hard, kind of like hockey pucks, but buttery hockey pucks.
Then a little before 6:00 we went down to the spa where we had booked a 90 minute couples body scrub and massage. The treatment was booked for 6:00, but we had to wait until about 6:15 because the person before us ran over. When he came out he looked like crazy older man and he started talking about how his bar mitzvah was tomorrow. Weird. Anyway, it felt like we were waiting forever. Finally they came to get us and took us back into the treatment room. They invited us to use the shower first for a “five minute shower,” which we did. Then we put on robes and sat in chairs on a ltitle patio, where they did a “foot ritual” which was basically a little foot scrub. Next we went back into the room, got onto the table, and spent about an hour and a half being exfoliated and massaged. It was great and flew by. I think next time I’d rather just have the massage – the exfoliating scrub was nice but just felt like it was breaking up the massage too much – but it was still a great experience.
By the time we got out of there it was almost 8 o’clock and dinner was scheduled for 8:30. We walked across from the spa to Commonwealth, where our dinner would be, to tell them we’d probably be a little late. As we approached the restaurants, still in our bathrobes, the manager said “we do have a dress code here.” He was joking. It was pretty funny.
We then changed and made it back to the restaurant for dinner around 8:45. The restaurant is two rooms and designed very nicely. We sat inside in a corner booth so we could sit next to each other. I wasn’t in the mood for a cocktail so I got a diet coke, but Tzvi got something that had gin and egg whites that was actually pretty tasty. As soon as we told the waiter about Tzvi’s allergy he went to get the chef, and that’s when we met Chef Sid. Chef Sid (short for Siddhartha) is the executive chef for the Rosewood and oversees both of the restaurants, the lounge, the in-room dining and the pool dining. He came back a couple of times during the meal and we spoke to him for a little while, learning how he grew up in India, used to cook in London and then was the executive chef of the Rosewood Abu Dhabi. He told us about a particular dish at Costa that he thinks is really good. It’s a shrimp dish, which we said we don’t eat, so he said if we come for lunch he’ll make it for us with snapper and we can try it on him. Very nice man.
Anyway, the restaurant is called Commonwealth and the menu is themed to all of the different countries that were presently or formerly under British rule. There were Indian dishes, Irish dishes, etc. To start I had an orange- butternut squash soup that was thick but didn’t have cream and was absolutely delicious. Tzvi had an asparagus and mushroom tart that was a cross between a tart and quiche, which he really enjoyed. For the mains we both had salmon, which came simply prepared with veggies and potatoes and was delicious. For dessert we had an apple tart and a coffee-chocolate thing. Both were great.
I think we were the second to last people to be seated, so by the time we were done eating the restaurant was empty except for one other couple at the table next to us. They were southern and probably in their late 30s. First we watched as the man spent about a half hour reading the wine list and telling his wife about it. They both ordered salmon, then their food came, and then he was confused and said “didn’t I order the rack of lamb?” He ended up keeping the salmon.
We walked around a bit looking for the fountain show. There’s supposed to be giant fountain that sprays along with music every hour, like in Vegas, but it didn’t seem to be working. It was also very hard to find. There are a lot of signs here that seem like they don’t point you anywhere, or at least not where they say they do. For example, you can find two signs pointing in opposite directions that both say Grand Hyatt. Anyway, we got a little lost walking around and didn’t really get anywhere. The grounds of the resort are beautiful, but there seems to be a lot of unused space. Maybe over time they’ll develop the property and use more space.
We were tired and there wasn’t really anything we wanted to do, so we just went back to the room and went to sleep.
Great day.